Original|Odaily Planet Daily(@OdailyChina)
Author|Wenser(@wenser 2010 )
The esteemed "China's top storage stock," CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies), finally landed on the STAR Market today, closing up 465.8% on its debut, with a full-day turnover exceeding 140 billion yuan and a total market capitalization reaching 3.28 trillion yuan.
Simultaneously, it broke multiple thresholds on its first trading day, setting several A-share historical records including "first tech stock with an opening market cap exceeding 3 trillion yuan," "top market cap on the STAR Market," "first stock with a single-day turnover breaking 100 billion yuan," and "first IPO with over 100 billion turnover combined with a >50% turnover rate."
With the market performance on its debut day settled, the next question arises—can CXMT's stock price continue to rise? What is its target price? Currently, the market still holds some divergence on this matter.
Heated Debate on CXMT's Future Price Direction: Nomura Bullish to 116 Yuan, Northeast Securities Gives 10-15x PE Judgment
As the currently "world's fourth, China's first" storage giant, CXMT's market position is unquestionable.
According to data disclosed in CXMT's IPO press release, the company expects revenue of 110-120 billion yuan for the first half of 2026, a year-on-year increase of 612.53% to 677.31%; it expects net profit attributable to shareholders of 50-57 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2244.03% to 2544.19%. In light of this, many institutions have given their own judgments on its future prospects.
Viewpoint One: Nomura Securities Gives a Buy Rating, Bullish to 116 Yuan, Market Cap Exceeds 7.7 Trillion RMB
This morning, international investment bank Nomura Securities issued a report, giving CXMT a "buy" rating with a target price of 116 yuan, corresponding to a 20x P/E ratio, implying an upside of 1239.5%. This valuation is double that of US storage giant Micron (MU), meaning CXMT's stock price would rise about 13.4 times from its IPO price, corresponding to a market cap of approximately 7.76 trillion yuan.
Notably, in the report title, Nomura likened the industrial value of CXMT's DRAM chips to "the jewel in the crown of China." According to its model projections, CXMT's revenue will rapidly increase from 61.8 billion yuan in 2025 to 290.7 billion yuan in 2026, 560.8 billion yuan in 2027, and 773.3 billion yuan in 2028; Nomura also expects CXMT's net profit attributable to shareholders to climb from less than 1.9 billion yuan to 130.3 billion yuan in 2026, 277.2 billion yuan in 2027, and 393.1 billion yuan in 2028. The compound annual growth rates for these two indicators are projected at 63% for revenue and 74% for net profit.
It is worth noting that Nomura's judgment, which is nearly 2.4 times the current market cap, is not unfounded. It is based on a comprehensive assessment of dimensions such as capacity expansion, technology upgrades, and price increases, and is also related to factors such as CXMT's current product mix, the storage super-cycle, and the subsequent use of IPO proceeds. For more on the underlying logic, recommended reading: "Thirteen Times Bullish on CXMT?"
According to information from CXMT's IPO prospectus, out of the 57.9 billion yuan raised, 7.5 billion yuan will be used for technology upgrade and transformation of the mass production line for memory wafer manufacturing, 13 billion yuan will be used for core DRAM memory process technology upgrades, and 9 billion yuan will be used for forward-looking technology research and development. The market generally believes the final 9 billion yuan will be allocated to HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) direction R&D, which is the core business of current memory giants like SK Hynix and Micron—AI chip high-bandwidth memory.
In other words, CXMT is not content with its current mainline DRAM business but is also striving to expand into high-profit, high-demand sectors like HBM.
Viewpoint Two: Northeast Securities Judges Valuation Range Converges to 3.2-5.7 Trillion RMB
Compared to the extremely optimistic Nomura, Northeast Securities offers a relatively conservative bullish range, but it still implies over 42% upside from the current market cap.
To provide a reasonable valuation for CXMT, Northeast Securities gives a market cap reference from the following three aspects:
- Market Share Relative Valuation Perspective: Using US stocks as a valuation reference, by comparing and analyzing the market shares of Micron Technology, SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, SanDisk, etc., in the DRAM and NAND markets, and splitting their market caps by different businesses, considering CXMT's future market share, the target market cap is 3.49 trillion yuan.
- Profitability Breakdown Perspective: By decomposing CXMT's historical revenue and cost structure, using price and capacity as core variables to forecast profits for this year and next, with 2027 net profit attributable to shareholders at 284.8 billion yuan, a 10—15x P/E ratio corresponds to a target market cap of 2.85—4.27 trillion yuan.
- Market Cap Per Unit Capacity Perspective: Calculating the market cap per unit capacity for overseas listed storage companies in the DRAM business and using this as a basis, a target market cap of 3.22—3.99 trillion yuan is calculated.
For detailed calculations and reasoning, recommended reading: "A-Share's New 'Stock King' is Born, How to Reasonably Value CXMT?"
Viewpoint Three: Multiple ETF Funds Warn ETF NAV May Deviate from IOPV on CXMT's Debut Day
This morning, prior to CXMT's listing, ETF fund managers such as ChinaAMC and Harvest Fund issued announcements warning that some of their ETFs participated in the IPO subscription for CXMT and valued it at the issue price. However, the ETF's Indicative Optimized Portfolio Value (IOPV) only includes CXMT's issue price and does not reflect its market price fluctuations. Therefore, on CXMT's debut day, the IOPV of these ETFs may differ from the actual net asset value per fund share, and investors are advised to pay attention to related investment risks.
In this regard, an ETF fund manager explained that currently, ETF participation in IPOs is generally done together with active equity funds. The IOPV for ETFs is strictly calculated based on the PCF (Portfolio Composition File) list, and restricted shares like new stocks not yet included as constituents are not counted. CXMT's sharp rise on its debut will cause the actual net asset value per share of ETFs that participated in the IPO to be slightly higher than the IOPV, creating a deviation. In such cases, potential arbitrage strategies could include buying the ETF while hedging with derivatives, retaining only the excess exposure from the deviation.
In simpler terms, the IOPV (reference net value) seen by investors is calculated based on CXMT's issue price of 8.66 yuan, but the fund's actual NAV is calculated based on the market price. Therefore, the IOPV severely "undervalues" the fund's true worth, appearing as a discount. Essentially, this is because CXMT's opening price surged, but there's a lag in the display on investment systems, aiming to prevent investors from buying ETF funds at inflated prices due to market volatility and incurring losses.
Viewpoint Four: Analyst Believes CXMT's Listing Surge Still Hard to Change Global DRAM Shortage Situation
Today, Milk Road AI analyst Melvin posted an analysis on CXMT's stock price surge.
He stated that in less than a year, CXMT's global DRAM market share increased from less than 4% to about 7.7%-8%, with Q1 revenue this year growing 719% year-on-year to 50.8 billion yuan. This growth primarily benefited from Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron shifting more capacity to AI server storage (especially HBM), creating a supply gap in the traditional DDR5, LPDDR5 market, which CXMT filled by addressing mid-to-low-end DRAM demand.
However, CXMT's current capacity is far from sufficient to meet global demand. Its current monthly wafer capacity is about 290,000-320,000 pieces, lower than Samsung's approximately 630,000 pieces and SK Hynix's about 500,000 pieces. Furthermore, U.S. export restrictions on advanced lithography equipment are limiting the pace of CXMT's further expansion.
He believes that CXMT will find it difficult to enter the HBM market in the short term and therefore will not change the supply-demand dynamics of AI storage. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron will likely maintain their advantage in high-margin products like HBM, server DRAM, and LPDDR5X, and the global storage shortage cycle may persist.
In simpler terms, the analyst believes that CXMT's listing surge will not directly translate into a linear increase in market share or a massive surge in storage industry supply, offering a relatively neutral expectation for market cap and price performance from a rational perspective.
Viewpoint Five: On-Chain Sentiment Divided, US & China Addresses Bullish, South Korean Addresses Bearish
Apart from institutions and analysts, the pre-listing long-short divergence for CXMT on-chain is also quite distinct.
According to HyperInsight monitoring, on the eve of CXMT's listing, wallets attributable to CXMT on Hyperliquid showed: US, Hong Kong, and Mainland China wallets were overall bullish, while South Korean-labeled wallets became the main shorting force in this sample.
Among them, South Korean wallets held about $760,000 in short positions, a scale approximately 38 times that of their long positions; Taiwan-labeled wallets were also slightly bearish, with a net short of about $329,000.
On the long side:
- US-labeled wallets held $1.6 million in long positions and $345,000 in short positions, net long about $1.255 million;
- Hong Kong-labeled wallets held $1.3 million in long positions and $431,000 in short positions, net long about $869,000;
- Mainland China-labeled wallets held only $83,000 in long positions and $16,000 in short positions, net long about $67,000.
Assuming the $760,000 in short positions from South Korean wallets were all opened before the opening bell at a unified price of $6.48 with no subsequent adjustments and all at 1x leverage, the theoretical floating loss on these short positions would be about $48,500, a loss rate of approximately 6.4%. Combined with today's closing data, the long side returned home with full pockets.
Viewpoint Six: CXMT's Upside Expected to Last Several Days, Low Float High Market Cap to Continue Fueling FOMO
Aside from the above information, mainstream views within the crypto market still maintain some confidence in CXMT's subsequent upward trend.
Their main points include:
First, the current freely tradable shares of CXMT account for only 6.63%, highly similar to the initial performance of SpaceX (SPCX) post-listing;
Second, the memory super-cycle remains the main theme in capital markets. Coupled with memory manufacturers like SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Micron Technology continuing to expand production, advance chip partnerships, and build new factories, and with analysts expecting SK Hynix's Q2 earnings to far exceed market expectations, industry tailwinds directly fuel bullish sentiment for CXMT;
Third, CXMT's unique status as the "domestic storage industry leader" makes it a highly watched speculative target within the A-share market and even across multiple capital markets. Combined with the previous "A-share premium effect," a 15-20x P/E ratio expectation is not unrealistic;
Fourth, despite "rumored internal memos" claiming brokerages have banned hype around CXMT, market performance shows institutions maintain some restraint while still paying close attention. This suggests institutional buying interest for CXMT still exists, thereby storing some momentum for future gains.
Finally, as an aside, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, since CXMT's listing, the wealth of its founder Zhu Yiming's family has surged nearly 300%, reaching $13.9 billion. Currently, he is reportedly preparing to distribute 40% of this as bonuses to employees. This move might emulate SK Hynix's practice of distributing 10% of its annual net profit to all employees and may also, to some extent, delay the pace of equity monetization.
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